CWE-547: Use of Hard-coded, Security-relevant Constants
Description
The product uses hard-coded constants instead of symbolic names for security-critical values, which increases the likelihood of mistakes during code maintenance or security policy change.
Submission Date :
July 19, 2006, midnight
Modification Date :
2023-06-29 00:00:00+00:00
Organization :
MITRE
Extended Description
If the developer does not find all occurrences of the hard-coded constants, an incorrect policy decision may be made if one of the constants is not changed. Making changes to these values will require code changes that may be difficult or impossible once the system is released to the field. In addition, these hard-coded values may become available to attackers if the code is ever disclosed.
Example - 1
The usage of symbolic names instead of hard-coded constants is preferred.
The following is an example of using a hard-coded constant instead of a symbolic name.
char buffer[1024];...fgets(buffer, 1024, stdin);If the buffer value needs to be changed, then it has to be altered in more than one place. If the developer forgets or does not find all occurrences, in this example it could lead to a buffer overflow.
enum { MAX_BUFFER_SIZE = 1024 };...char buffer[MAX_BUFFER_SIZE];...fgets(buffer, MAX_BUFFER_SIZE, stdin);In this example the developer will only need to change one value and all references to the buffer size are updated, as a symbolic name is used instead of a hard-coded constant.
Related Weaknesses
This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined to give an overview of the different insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction.
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